I just finished this and can offer a few ideas. I diagram how the urban community is in the center, suburbs, and rural communities grow from there. I get a variety of books for the kids to look through and we discuss and sort them. I also have collected a lot of pictures over the years for the same purpose. I share a few of the books with the class during this unit. (City Kid, Country Kid, The Little House, etc.) Once we've done this, we create a simple chart comparing characteristics of each type. What would you see in each? We also list a few example of each that the kids are familiar with (nearby suburbs, rural areas and cities). For the final activity, we create a page for each type of community, importing pictures and typing a sentence to describe each. I use this for assessment. I hope that helps a little.

thank you so much! Did you introduce each community one at a time or did you do more than one in a day? we only do social studies 2 times a week. i was going to do one a day and then on the fourth day begin to compare....OR shoudl i compare contrast as i go along. Day 1 this week i am just introducing the word community.

This beautiful picture book illustrates the change from rural, to suburban, then urban and how the land and people around the little house changed. My 2nd graders loved it. It won the Caldecott award, I think. : )

I have a digital story I made for a class I took in the spring. It is about a Raccoon that vists all three types of communities. It is a little goofy, but my kids love it. I can email it to you if you if you would like. It will play on windows media player.